


I’ve got things on my mind (and they're gonna come out from time to time)

by janie_tangerine



Series: the jaimebrienne spite countdown to season eight [11]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child on Child Sexual Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Mental Health Issues, Not For Cersei Fans I Warned You, Panic Attacks, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Therapy, Underage Rape/Non-con, sequel to yesterday's piece but not as heavy I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 15:27:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18236762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: And now he’s just… how the fuck is he even supposed to talk to Tyrion in his life without blurting hey, you know what, I’ve just discussed a few things with my therapist and guess what, I let her ruin your life, too, and I didn’t understand how much, and I didn’t even hear you out when you tried to tell me and you had half my fucking years, will you ever forgive me for that?He has no fucking clue.He has no bloody fucking clue, and fine, that is why he’s pretty much unable to think of anything else, but it still doesn’t mean he had any right to be a fucking arse to others.





	I’ve got things on my mind (and they're gonna come out from time to time)

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand, with the same premises as yesterday - because this is in the same 'verse, while I tried to keep most of the fics for this separated but in this case and in another's (LESS ANGSTY THANKFULLY) it didn't want to happen... have today's hot take that kind of called for it and I figured that it worked better as a sequel, given that the aforementioned hot take is... *sigh*
> 
>  
> 
> Spoilers: this was from last year. As at this point I have a feeling that some people have issues knowing what words mean (and tropes mean tbqh) and again, given where he comes from the point barely stands and that I kind of wanted to give a more uplifting conclusion to yesterday's fic as well, you're getting the follow-up, just not as heavy even if it's still what it says on the tin. Again, I wrote it not long after the first one and I still got it double-checked with the professional friend who also greenlighted yesterday's and that's going to be it when it comes to this one verse. Hopefully I still managed to do an acceptable job with this one as well - _all_ warnings and notes sources from [the previous fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18223499) are valid for this one as well. And I'll leave you to it after stating again that any shortcoming is on me and not on my beta reader/source-provider as usual, that I own zilch (with title stolen from brian fallon as usual).
> 
> Also: I didn't put the receipt for The Canon CSA Instance That We Discuss In This which concerns Tyrion more than Jaime (but which would end up being brought up again in such a setting I think) and it was spelled way less subtextually, but just in case, I'm referencing this one scene [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7n79tN6Fpw).

He doesn’t realize that he’s doing _it_ until one week since he started.

Admittedly, he’s had… issues.

Not that he _doesn’t_ have Issues with the capital I, which is a thing he’s had to learn to accept and he still struggles with _fully_ embracing even if it’s been eight months of weekly therapy and according to Stannis he has Barely Scratched The Damned Surface. Great. He _so_ can’t wait what’s in store for the next few years, because _that_ ’s the minimum he’s looking at when it comes to trying to figure his shit out.

And thing is: he can’t even say that maybe it’s an excessive esteem.

Because, guess fucking _what_ , he hasn’t gone for a week and he won’t go in the next because Stannis is out for some kind of conference in the US that’s going to take him _that_ long (and he said he wanted to bring his daughter along and take a vacation, and honestly, given his job, Jaime figures he earned it), and the last time they saw each other it was _fucking rough_.

Now: he’s probably justified for a lot of the shit he’s put Brienne through in the last aforementioned weeks. He ended up discussing that infamous episode including Tyrion, Cersei and Oberyn and Elia Martell who had just been visiting when he was barely a few months old and the moment he had to face that according to the specialist _that_ also counted as sexual molestation, actually that was _blatant_ , and no, there was _no_ way it was anything else, he had felt like throwing up the entirety of yesterday’s lunch and dinner.

Thing is: Stannis _had_ told him that he couldn’t have known or done anything about it.

But since that was so blatantly put and explained, he just —

It’s been a week.

He’s spent _the entirety_ of it avoiding calling his brother or even looking at his social media, and the moment Brienne asked him something beyond the basics needed if you live with someone in the same apartment, he’s pretty much either ignored her existence or barely even acknowledged it, he hasn’t talked to her on his own once, they have barely touched each other and he’s maybe said hi and good morning to her, but not _all of the time_.

And he’s barely even noticed it, because the nagging thought eating him up from the inside is, _how can I fucking face him or talk to him if I know that Cersei did_ that _to him, too, and other than telling her to stop that one time I didn’t realize what exactly she was doing?_

Fine. He hadn’t realized it when it came to _himself_ , but on one not-so-deep level he had _always_ known that her treatment of their brother was abysmal, and he just — the more he thinks about the unholy fucking mess his childhood has been, the more he hates everything about it. And _how_ didn’t he realize how wrong everything was when he saw how Cersei treated _Tyrion_ is a thought that he about can’t handle — fine, he couldn’t see it with _himself_ because they were too tangled together and he could have never noticed, but shit, he _did_ see all the reasons why Tyrion hated _both_ Cersei and their father, and he could entirely understand the latter, so how, _how_ couldn’t he —

Yeah.

Good question.

And now he’s just… how the fuck is he even supposed to _talk_ to Tyrion in his life without blurting _hey, you know what, I’ve just discussed a few things with my therapist and guess what, I let her ruin your life, too, and I didn’t understand how much, and I didn’t even hear you out when you tried to tell me and you had half my fucking years, will you ever forgive me for that_?

He has no fucking clue.

He has _no bloody fucking clue_ , and fine, _that_ is why he’s pretty much unable to think of anything else, but it still doesn’t mean he had any right to be a fucking arse to others.

Especially his girlfriend who also happens to _not_ have lost her shit with his Issues a hell of a long time ago, but point is: he doesn’t realize that until one week into his Fucking Worst Mood Of The Century he comes back home from work fairly late. She’s left him something to eat on the living room table and she’s watching some show on Netflix that he’s fairly sure he should recognize but _doesn’t_.

“Your brother called an hour ago,” she says, keeping her voice even.

He mumbles something in acknowledgment, grabs the water bottle on the table and a glass — he thinks he needs it.

“He also said you’ve been strangely off the grid for a while and would like to know if there’s something wrong as soon as possible,” she goes on, her voice still even.

 _If there’s something wrong_. Understatement of the century. His hands shake as he keeps on pouring the water.

“I told him you were in a rough patch and you’d call when you could. Still, he’s getting worried.” She pauses, as if she’s about to say something else. Then — “Whenever you feel like it, obviously.”

“Yeah, well,” he snaps back, feeling like he _can’t_ discuss it now, “what’s happened to minding one’s business?”

The moment he says it, though, his fingers shake harder and both bottle and glass fall to the ground, shattering in pieces, and at least the bottle was empty but the glass was not and it drenches his trousers completely, but he can barely even process _that_ because —

That was what —

Fucking _hell_ —

Every single fucking time he’d ever try to ask Cersei _anything_ when she wasn’t in mind of sharing or when she didn’t like that question or when it would have made him put two and two together when it came to how much their relationship was _not_ as mutually exclusive as he’d have thought, she’d answer exactly _that_ fucking _what’s happened to minding one’s business_ and —

He shakes his head, and then it crashes down on him, realizing that _he’s spent an entire fucking week ignoring her (and Tyrion, but mostly_ her _), being generally an arse, not even looking at her if not necessary, not touching her if she didn’t do it first, and now he’s just told her that damned answer and —_

“Hey,” she says, turning off the tv and moving closer, “are you —”

“I’m —” he blurts, feeling his throat clam up. “Fuck, _fuck_ , fuck, what did I just do —”

“Hey, it’s a _glass._ ” Brienne grabs his arm and dragging him to the nearest chair, “You didn’t do anything.”

“No,” he says, “it’s not the glass. Shit, I — I — I’m turning into _her_ , fuck —”

“You’re _what_?”

“Please, I’ve just —” He stops, feeling like he might throw up all over again.

“Listen,” Brienne says after he doesn’t talk for a minute, breathing _very_ fast and feeling like he’ll lose his shit if he opens his mouth to _explain_ , “let’s just do a thing where I clean up that water before any of us slips over it, you take your time and then you talk to me about what you feel like sharing _when_ you feel like sharing? Because as far as I see you’re _not_ turning into your sister whatsoever, but you’re obviously worrying about something, so — just take it easy, all right?”

“Thanks,” he manages to say before she squeezes his wrist, nods and moves to find a rag.

Right.

Now he’s going to — fucking list in his head the entire Iron Maiden discography in chronological order _and_ reverse until he gets a fucking grip on himself and he doesn’t feel like sticking his nails inside his arm until it bleeds, and when he’s done that and _barely_ gotten that grip, he decides that maybe it won’t hurt if he does the same with the singles that made the UK top forty, and _that_ kind of works, in the sense that by the time he’s gone through the list in chronological order he feels like he can actually… well. Have this conversation.

He opens his eyes to find that the ground is clean and Brienne is back on the sofa, looking at him… like she’s worried out of her fucking mind, _of course she is_.

And he barely even noticed.

 _Shit_.

“I’m sorry,” he says at once, figuring he’ll get it out of the way.

“… All right,” she replies, “but I can’t say you’re forgiven if you don’t tell me for _what_ you’re apologizing.”

_The hell —_

“Come on,” he says, “I’ve been treating you like… like _she_ treated me, of course I have to apologize.”

Brienne keeps on _not_ looking too sure of it. “Uhm,” she clears her throat. “Okay, you’ve been worryingly distant, you barely talked to me and you’ve been going through the motions for a week, but last I checked you haven’t, you know, lied to me about seeing other people or treated me like I was some kind of disposable commodity or _worse_ , and obviously something’s wrong with you because you sounded right angry before, but given that it started _just after you talked to Stannis_ and I have a feeling that it had something to do with it, and you’re not going back for another week… I mean, I just assumed you were working through something on your own and you didn’t want to share and that at worst I had to hold on until next time you saw him. If you feel like you _have_ to apologize fine, apologies accepted, but I’m not offended or anything.”

“… Oh,” he says, suddenly feeling like he won’t be able to hold himself straight much longer _and_ like she’s just — pulled the carpet from under his feet. “I — well. She always used to say _that_. The thing about minding one’s business.”

“Well, you never told _me_ that before, and it doesn’t mean you’re turning into _her_ ,” she says. She still sounds concerned as hell. Obviously she is.

And — thing is, he’s never told her the details of _any_ of the ugliness that has come out of the last eight months because he doesn’t want her to think… any _less_ of him or _whatever the fuck else_ his brain has decided she might do, and maybe he kind of wants her to _never_ know how bad it was because then she’d look at him _different_ and he doesn’t know if he wants that, whichever kind of different it is, but it _would_ happen.

Then he realizes that she’s with _him_ and she met him when he was seriously considering jumping off a bridge, so how much _worse_ could it be —

He drops sitting down on the nearest chair in front of her. “It’s just. We discussed a thing, last week.”

“All right.”

“He — to cut things short, he asked me if Cersei ever was, you know, like _that_ with anyone else. That I knew of, anyway. And — I _didn’t_ , but — once this business partner of my father’s showed up with his kids for a visit, they were our age, and it was a few months after my brother was born. They wanted to see him or _something_ , and Cersei just — well. She grabbed him, uh, _there_.”

“You mean —” Brienne says, looking petrified.

“Yeah. And she just — was twisting, and it was obviously painful, and I told her to stop it because she was obviously hurting him but she didn’t really seem to _care_ even after she did. And — according to _him_ , I mean, Stannis, it — did count.”

Brienne says nothing but gives him a nod, encouraging him to go on. As if it was easy.

“And — I might have spent the entire week thinking that I should have realized _then_ that… it wasn’t right. And I should have done something _more_ , and — I just, I don’t even know how I’m supposed to talk to him now without telling him I couldn’t do anything more than _that_ and that I should have been _better_ than I was —”

“You know it’s _not_ your fault, right?”

The interruption makes him feel like he just got struck by a bout of lightening. “What —”

“For — you were what, _eight_? And — from what I gathered, it… started earlier, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” he admits, not quite looking at her.

“I don’t think anyone could have expected you to do any more than _that_. I mean, your brother talks to _you_ but not to Cersei, doesn’t he?”

“And will he keep on doing it when he eventually learns that I _saw it happen_ and did nothing? Because there’s no way I can’t _not_ tell him now.”

“Knowing him,” she says, “I don’t really think _that_ ’s how he’d see it.”

“I just — I hate this,” he admits, and it feels weird voicing it to _anyone else_ that’s not, well, _his therapist_ , but he has a feeling it had to come out. “It’s — I don’t like what it’s turning me into, I don’t want to sound like her or I’ll start thinking she was right when she said we were the same person, I hate that I didn’t understand that it was fucked up _then_ and — I’m feeling like it’s never going to go away and I don’t want either of you to have to deal with it.”

“Listen, I’m no one to discuss this in depth and I’m _not_ the licensed therapist, but you know it… takes time to deal with _that_ kind of thing, that no one here thinks less of you for not having seen things that not even your damned _father_ saw or cared to see and that given how long it lasted, it’s pretty damn impressive of you that you’re _dealing with it_ in the first place?”

“Yeah, and I still would like to not _treat you like shit_ even if —”

“Jaime, for — never mind that it doesn’t even count as far as I’m concerned, do you think I _hadn’t_ taken into account that it might happen?”

For a moment, he forgets what he was about to say. “You did _what_?”

“Given _why_ you’re seeing a therapist and considering _how_ you figured it out — I was there, you know.”

“I remember that,” he half-snorts.

“You don’t think I _didn’t_ feel completely helpless when it happened? I mean, it’s not on _you_ , but it was obvious it was nothing good. And you’re talking to someone who ended up in therapy at fifteen because of you know _what_ and — right, I never told you.”

“What don’t I know?”

“That she told me I _finally_ got over most of the shit I had been struggling over some three months after we got together and I told her I actually didn’t think once that you might be pulling a practical joke over me. If it took me almost ten years to get over _my damned issues with my looks_ , I wouldn’t assume that it’d take you six months to work through _all_ of that. And I’ve had my fairly shitty moments. I had taken into account you might take it badly at some points. That doesn’t count as _being like your sister_ , it counts as the contrary. I wasn’t angry or anything, I was just figuring things weren’t going too well, but — I figured that either you’d talk to me or you’d wait it out and talk with Stannis and you’d work it out eventually. Really, if I need you to apologize for _something_ I’m not letting you off the hook, but in this case? Don’t. Really.”

He nods, feeling like he can’t even fucking talk, but for those five minutes or something it had looked really fucking dire, and he’s suddenly so tired he really could fall off that chair, and it suddenly hits him in the face that they haven’t really touched in an entire damned week when it never was a problem before, all the contrary —

“I won’t then,” he says, wishing he could just get out of this with one of his usual questionable jokes in bad taste, except that _it’s really not working_. “What if I’m really fucking tired?” He blurts, realizing that his brain to mouth filter is pretty much busted right now.

She shrugs, moving so that she’s leaning in the back of the sofa, and raises an arm, saying nothing.

He’s out of the chair and pressing against her on the sofa a moment later, letting out a breath of relief when her arms go around his back, one of her hands at the back of his head. Suddenly his out of control heartbeat slows down, a bit, as he breathes in relief against her neck, and he hates himself for _not_ having realized sooner that he was zoning out and that he went and gave _this_ up for this long —

“Shit,” he groans, “now _Tyrion_ is probably worried sick too, isn’t he?”

“You know,” she tells him, and he can feel that her heart is slowing down, too, “I won’t deny that he didn’t sound _not_ worried sick on the phone, but I could just tell him to come for dinner one of these days and I could be around if you want to, like, tell him. Or I could not be around. _Or_ , I can call him and tell him that you’re fine but you’re working through a few things right now and you’ll call him as soon as possible. Just so that he doesn’t start getting too worried sick, but I _can_ call him if you feel like it’s too much.”

He wishes he could take the easy way out —

But he has a feeling that it wouldn’t help, not considering his Issues With The Capital I.

“Let’s say that I call him, we do the dinner and you’re around,” he decides, figuring that he’s _never_ going to handle it if he’s on his own but since she _did_ get it when he told, that might work. “If it’s —”

“I proposed it,” she says, “of course it’s fine. And hey, you _haven’t_ delegated it to me when you _could_ have, I think you’re putting some valiant effort in here.”

He snorts. “Calling people is not a valiant effort.”

“It _is_ when you just said you couldn’t even think about seeing them for the entire past week. Give yourself some time and don’t be too hard on yourself, you’re not doing halfway bad all things considered.”

His first instinct is to say, _as long as you think that,_ except that hadn’t he had a long-ass conversation last month about how he tends to _not_ really make much of his own accomplishments that aren’t related to how good he might be at his job or at his _objective_ skills and that’s apparently Not Really Healthy, Either?

He takes a deep breath.

“Fine,” he says, “you win. I could do a lot worse. Now I think I would _really_ rather make up for this week’s lost time that was not _anyone_ ’s fault and we’ll leave it at that, so if you want to keep on watching that show it’s fine as long as you don’t move too much.”

“Thanks for the offer,” she says, “but I did miss you this week, not that it was _anyone’s_ fault and _Stranger Things_ is going nowhere, so I’d rather look at you instead. Unless you’d rather ogle at Winona Ryder, but —”

“Not my type,” he snorts, laughing genuinely for the first time in the entire week. “I might agree with you, though,” he says, and then he closes the distance between then and decides that for _at least_ the entire evening he’s not going to think about anything else that’s not catching up with all the time they could have been kissing and _didn’t_ , and fuck everything else.

Maybe he really should come to terms with the fact that it _is_ going to take time to get over — everything he has to get over with, and maybe he doesn’t have to do it in a year and it’s fine if he doesn’t rush things when it’s obvious there’d be no point in doing it except hurting himself any further.

 _Now_ , though, nothing hurts.

He thinks he’s going to stop worrying about what he’ll have to face tomorrow and enjoy the moment instead. He doesn't want to think it means he's getting better at managing everything, but maybe it means he  _is_ and he's just not letting himself see it, and maybe he should be less hard on himself, shouldn't he?

Well.

Sure as hell he's going to try.

 

 

End


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